Vince Cable: Cabinet maverick runs risk of going nuclear

Vince Cable has boasted that he can bring down the Coalition by using his very
own nuclear weapon – namely walking out on David Cameron in protest. At
Westminster, it increasingly appears that Mr Cable, rather than planning to
flounce out of the Cabinet, is challenging the Prime Minister to sack him.

Ed Miliband shares a platform with Vince Cable at an event in London to promote the 'YES' campaignPhoto: PA

Using the thin veneer of campaigning – in both the local elections and for a Yes vote in the referendum on AV – the Business Secretary has made a series of clearly thought-out attacks on Mr Cameron. And unlike his “nuclear” comments to undercover Daily Telegraph reporters in December, he is not afraid who hears his words.

On Thursday, Mr Cable reacted furiously to Mr Cameron’s speech on immigration. According to friends of Mr Cable, he was livid and had to be calmed down when he saw the Prime Minister’s words about “good immigration, not mass immigration”.

The Lib Dem Cabinet minister called the speech “very unwise” and accused the Prime Minister of stoking up fears.

When it became clear that Downing Street had put aside the usual Cabinet rules – namely that a minister cannot so overtly attack the Prime Minister and government policy – Tory MPs and ministers seethed.

Mr Cable is seen by the Tories as an unreconstructed Left-winger. They remember when he was a Labour politician. And if anyone had forgotten, Mr Cable last night fondly reminisced about his time as a Labour councillor

He then warmed to his theme and set about attacking the woman whom most Tories of the current generation – Mr Cameron included – grew up to revere. Mr Cable claimed that he and his brave Lib Dems had stopped “the Tories behaving like they did under Thatcher”.

The remark was loaded with such political dynamite that it can only have been written with one intention – to irritate Mr Cameron further and burnish his own credentials among Lib Dem activists and supporters.

It illustrates Mr Cable’s increasingly gung-ho attitude towards Mr Cameron. As did his other intervention yesterday when he taunted Mr Cameron, this time for failing to see the obvious benefits of the AV system.

He seemed very pleased with his observation, made while sharing a platform with Ed Miliband, that Mr Cameron owed his leadership of the Tory party to AV. If it had been first-past-the-post, David Davis would have won, he ventured.

Mr Cameron has avoided reacting. But it is becoming clear that even if there is some tacit understanding that the Lib Dems and Tories can attack each other’s policies until May 5, it is Mr Cable who is testing it to its limits.

He appears reckless to the point of almost willing Mr Cameron to make his day and fire him. Then, a still-principled Mr Cable (at least in his own mind) could return to the back benches and, while earning pots of money, he would act as a rallying point for disgruntled Lib Dems both at Westminster and in the country.

We will, in the coming months, see if Mr Cameron has the guts to use his own, non-nuclear, weapon and get rid of a man, who one senses, is rapidly replacing Ed Balls in the Prime Minister’s affections as the most annoying man in British politics.